Even as I said it, the security screen in the doorway to Elnear’s inner office dematerialized. She was already waiting there. “You’re here?” Half question, half demand. She gestured me inside.
When we were private again, she said, “Now explain: You weren’t there this morning. There were messages for me.… One was from Braedee, and it said that I needn’t worry about further attempts on my life. The other was from Charon, and it said that you were no longer my aide; that you’d left Earth.”
“‘Family problems’?” I asked.
She nodded, standing there with her hands folded—clenched—in front of her.
“Did he say whose family?”
The lines in her face deepened a little more. “No one has answered my queries. What’s wrong?”
I looked down, flexing my bad hand. “Charon.… Lazuli’s gone. He sent her away. He found out.” I looked up again. Elnear’s face was white. She turned away, so that she didn’t have to go on looking at me. “Talitha too.”
“Jiro—” she murmured, “I saw him, this morning. He wouldn’t speak to me, I thought it was because you—”
“It was because of me,” I said. “Charon kept him here, just to hurt her.”
Elnear put a hand up to her eyes like she wanted to shut out the day. Wondering if there wasn’t something she could have done differently, something she should have said.…
I couldn’t answer it. My eyes kept tracing the outline of the window frame behind her, over and over, around and around.… I clenched my jaw, and stopped.
Elnear sat down heavily in a chair. “Oh, Cat … oh why—?” Her hand made a fist.
I couldn’t answer that one, either.
She raised her head again. I felt her registering the details of my face—not even seeing the things that had made her eyes catch once. Seeing past them now, maybe not to what I really was, but close enough so that she understood why I couldn’t answer her. “What are you doing here?” she asked at last.
I wasn’t sure if she meant in her office, or on the planet. Neither was she. “Braedee won’t let me go till he’s got everything he wants from me. I had to see you, just to explain—”
“There’s nothing to explain.” Cutting me off, so she didn’t have to discuss it further. So she didn’t have to think about Lazuli’s suffering, or Jiro’s or mine—or her own. Lazuli and the children were all she’d had left to enjoy, to care about like a woman.
“Elnear,” I said. “I mean, Lady … that other message. What Braedee said. It’s true. You are safe.” I explained that much, as well as I could. “It’s all aimed at Daric’s head. Braedee’ll see that he doesn’t get near you. Everything’ll be all right for you now.” I wanted to believe that, wanted to feel her believe it.
For just a moment, she did. I caught the giddy feel of her relief as the burden of her secret fears fell away, as wonder and gratitude filled her. Everything is all right—Her mind echoed it.
And then it all began to change. She was safe, and alive … but what was there left to live for? She glanced away toward the pictures on her desk, that might as well be blank frames.
“Don’t even think that, damn it!”
She jerked back around. “What?”
“What you were just thinking.”
She sighed and looked away again, guilty this time.
“What did Stryger want?” Changing the subject, because I had to get her mind off that.
She shook her head. “I don’t know … he said he was just passing by.”
“He never does anything without a reason.”
She met my eyes, finally. “I know,” she said, resigned. She wished that I’d been there, to tell her what he’d really wanted. “He did ask about you, when he saw that you weren’t here.” I wondered if Daric had told him something already. “Perhaps he only came to gloat.” The unexpected bitterness surprised both of us. One large hand clutched the other again, twisted. Somewhere, she wasn’t even sure when, she’d finally begun to believe me.
“You really think he’s going to win, then?”
She shrugged slightly. “The combines that want either deregulation or Stryger aren’t going to change their votes. And enough others that have no real involvement will follow along and defeat us simply because they don’t care about anything beyond their own interests.” She faced the false image of the world outside in the false window space on her wall. “They have no accessible nerve-endings; I can’t reach them to make them react, make them feel that this is important—”
“That’s what Jule said, once.…”
“What?” She turned back to me.
“That if she could only make people feel what she felt when they hurt each other … maybe they wouldn’t hurt each other so much.” I rubbed my face. My skin felt too tight. “Those Assembly reps are alive—that means they’ve got to have some nerve-endings. You can hardly see the sharp end of a tack, Lady, and the end of a finger’s not much bigger. But you can make a big son of a bitch jump if it’s sharp enough. You believe that, or you wouldn’t be where you are.”
She nodded, almost showing a smile. “But it’s hard to find a good. sharp tack these days. That’s one reason why I wanted that Council slot so badly: there can only be real equality among creatures on the same level.… I’m tired of wasted effort.” Dreary visions of the future I’d given back to her slowly blotted out my image in her sight … visions of the struggle against deregulation lost, of a life controlled by the taMings, sterile and empty.… “I suppose that I won’t be seeing you any more,” she said, and the realization made her feel like she’d just lost her last friend.
“I’m still here,” I said, suddenly feeling less empty because she felt more empty. “I can still be your aide. I’m staying at Argentyne’s club—”
She shook her head slowly, looking away. “Charon has … supplied me with another aide. You have other duties now. You work for Centauri.” As if I needed reminding.
“No, I—”
“Cat,” she said, almost gently, wanting me to stop. “I am not your responsibility any more.” She looked at me, registering the dark fatigue circles under my eyes, the tense, hollow face of a burnout. “Please … do what you must do for Braedee, and then leave, before Centauri ruins your life too.” She put her hand on my arm. (And before you ruin any more lives.) She tried not to think it; didn’t mean to, couldn’t help herself … hoped I wouldn’t hear it.
I looked down; looked at my own clouded image in her mind, through a long silence. Not able to tell her goodbye and leave; not like this. “Lady—” I said. My bandaged hand closed over hers where it still rested on my arm, tightened until it hurt us both. I let go again, feeling her surprise. “You haven’t lost the vote, Stryger hasn’t won the Council slot yet. You know you’re not going to quit until it’s over—and you know I can’t either. There’s got to be a way to get at Stryger. Whatever it takes—” My hands made the truth-swearing sign, a pledge.
She shook her head, hut a little color was coming back into her face, into her thoughts. “You already know how hard it is … but yes, you’re right, of course. It isn’t over.” She forced a smile, and I felt the stubbornness of her will lock it into place. “There’s an old saying: ‘That which has to be done usually can be done.’ I’ll save my despair until I’m sure I need it.” The smile got warmer, until it was almost the smile I remembered.
(Whatever it takes,) I thought, looking through her eyes into her mind one last time. I left her office, still without saying goodbye. I went through the outer office without saying anything at all, without looking at the stranger who was there to take my place.
As I made my way back along the halls of the Assembly plex, the little bit of warmth her smile had left inside me faded, and I felt lousier than ever. I hadn’t sworn to her that we could still get Stryger just to cheer her up … but I might as well have. I wondered how long it would be until she realized that. Maybe she wouldn’t. But even if she did, I knew she’d keep on, now. She kn
ew what was important to her. I wished I felt the same way. I didn’t want to see Stryger lose everything because it served some higher Truth or Justice, or for the sake of the fucking Human Race. I wanted to cut him down because I knew he’d beaten the shit out of somebody that no one cared about … and because when he’d looked into my eyes he’d wanted to do the same thing to me.
Nobody cared. Elnear was right. If I told them what Stryger had done, what he was really like, they’d never believe me. Even if they did, even if I went to the Indy, got it on the Net, it wouldn’t change anything. The vote would still come out the same. My mind tendriled out, feeling strangers pass through me, measuring their thoughts. Those might look like human beings, but they were only tools some combine or other was using to push the right button. I pushed my fists into my jacket pockets. not thinking about what I was doing until the pain in my hand made me swear.
Two people passing me in the hall swore too, and shook out their own hands; looked at me and each other, confused and half-frightened. I realized I’d projected my pain without meaning to. I kept walking, pulling my brain back together, while they went on in the other direction, muttering.
I reached the platform of the closest transit stop, stood looking back at the sloping face of the building I’d just come out of. My eyes followed its rise up into the light, past the next level of the city high over my head. And I wondered what it would take to make every smug bastard in the entire Assembly jump. Maybe if it was their own freedom, or their own pain they had to choose, they’d think about it twice before they let it happen.…
I looked down again, squeezed my sore hand shut. Nobody around me jumped this time; I was back under control. “If they could only feel what I feel.…” I heard Jule say it again, inside my head. And suddenly the answer was right there, so clear to me that I couldn’t look away from it, no matter how hard I tried.
The transit arrived, stopped. The people around me pushed past and boarded, and it went on again, leaving me standing there like I’d been stunshot. There was a way to get at Stryger. A way to make the Assembly feel what it was like to be Stryger’s victim. I could make them live it.… But to do that, I’d have to live through it first.
TWENTY-SEVEN
“YOU LOOK LIKE shit,” Argentyne said when I got back to the club. Music and image filled the air around her, and faded again. The symb was setting up for the night’s show.
“You are what you eat,” I muttered. I looked up at her where she stood, and wondered if the only reason Elnear hadn’t made it unanimous was because she was too polite.
Argentyne waved a hand at the rest of the players, signaling a break, and climbed down from the stage. “Was it that bad?” she asked, as she reached my side. “Your visit to the Lady?”
I shook my head, looking down. “Not exactly.” It had been more the ride back, while I’d had plenty of time to think it all over. Before I could say anything else the message function on my databand began to beep. I answered it, heard Mikah’s voice. I raised my wrist up close to my ear, moved away from Argentyne’s sudden worried frown. “What did you get?” I murmured. “You find out who wants taMing dead?”
“Everybody wants him dead.”
“Say what?”
“Almost everybody that counts.” I heard him hesitate, trying to figure out how to make it clear. “What you got here is something that cuts across territories—”
“Jeezu.… Drugs?” I asked, because that seemed most likely; even though I couldn’t imagine how Daric could be in deep enough to get himself killed.
“You said taMing’s a user?”
“Yeah.” I heard him grunt. Up till now I’d thought that drugs were the least of Daric’s problems. Now I wasn’t so sure. But one thing I was sure of—I needed Daric alive, to get at Stryger. And if the whole Market was down on him, he might not be alive much longer. “Shit.… Can you get me access to somebody with some control over this? Is there anybody who can say stop and go?”
There was a long silence. “You want to negotiate?”
I rubbed my face, wanting to dig my fingernails into my skin. “Yeah.”
There was another long silence. I didn’t have to be reading his mind to know what he was thinking: he was afraid we’d both end up dead. “You got that kind of credit with Centauri?” he asked finally.
“Yeah.” Not sure if it was true, or even if I cared. “It’s important. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” The link went dead.
I let my hand drop, looked back at Argentyne. She was still standing there, with the same expression on her face. “It’ll be all right,” I lied, and watched her face relax into uncertainty. “I—I need to ask you some questions about your symb circuit.” Daric’s life wasn’t the only thing I had to be sure of, before I knew whether I could set up Stryger the way I wanted to.
She looked surprised, and then just distracted. “Not now, okay—we’re working it. Later I’ll show you anything you want.… Why don’t you get some sleep.” She nudged my body like I was a drone. I felt her concern, and her impatience to get back to the group … felt my resolve start to fall apart. “You can use my bed again.”
“Again?” I said.
Her mouth quirked. “You used it last night.”
I realized I didn’t remember anything at all about where I’d slept, anything at all about getting up again, besides the fact that it was too soon. “Were you there too?”
“How flattering.” Her smile stretched a little thinner; she shook her head. “No, laddie-love. I didn’t rape you while you slept.”
“Decent of you.” I trudged away toward the stairs. This time I didn’t even remember hitting the foam. My dreams were full of strange music, full of strangers with hungry faces.
I only woke up again because somebody was shaking me hard. I jerked awake, wet with sweat, hearing my own thick gasp of relief as I opened my eyes. Mikah was standing over me in the darkness of Argentyne’s room. “Cat,” he was saying for the twelfth or thirteenth time.
“Yeah,” I mumbled, and he let me go. I dropped back onto the bed with a grunt.
“You always sleep like that?” he asked. Like I was in a coma. I rubbed my eyes. “No,” I said. “Why?”
“Just wondered how you’d survived so long.” He dumped my leather jacket on top of me. “Let’s go.”
He didn’t bother to tell me where we were going, letting me figure it out for myself as I followed him downstairs. We went out a back way I hadn’t seen before. I was glad I didn’t have to face the wall of flesh out front, where the symb was blistering another night with light-song.
We went on deeper into the Deep End, while he filled me in. He’d gotten what I’d asked for, some leads, access to somebody who could give me the answers I wanted. He didn’t know any more than I did about what the answers would be. He didn’t say much else, as he took me through dim green-lit streets toward the smell of the sea.
When we reached the Locks his soldiers were waiting for us on the quay. I stopped moving, going cold in the pit of my stomach. Mikah swung around up ahead of me, impatient. “What are they doing here?” I asked.
Surprise, and then irritation, stung through his brain as he registered my question, the look on my face.
“Sorry—” I said, before he could ask me if I really thought he’d set me up.
His body jerked in what looked like a shrug, but was too angry. He held up his hand, silently showing me the line of the healed scar on his palm.
I bent my head. “Sorry.”
He nodded at his gang. “They’re only here to prove to the Governor that I’m not running solo—and neither are you.” His Family was backing him in this; that was how he’d gotten the meeting. “This is as far as they go, though. We’re going out.” He looked toward the Locks.
I thought about the billions of tons of water barely held back by the transparent wall of the domes … about being on the wrong side of the wall. I tried to keep my reacti
on off my face as I nodded, looking back at him. I remembered being down here before, seeing what looked like dim lights showing out there in the undersea night. Maybe it made a kind of security sense, to whoever we were meeting.
One of the soldiers, one who was built like the bouncers at Purgatory, held out a couple of drysuits to us as we reached the edge of the quay. “I can’t swim.…” I said.
Mikah laughed. “Neither can I. Don’t sweat it. Everything’s taken care of.” One way. But he didn’t say that. I didn’t ask about the return trip, figuring that if he was willing to risk it for me, the least I could do was keep my mouth shut. He wasn’t armored tonight, but he stripped himself of half a dozen weapons before he took his suit. I watched him put it on, copying his moves; as I sealed the helmet, one of the smaller access locks opened in front of us like a silent invitation. Mikah made some last handtalk to his men, and we stepped inside.
Cold foaming water roared into the hollow space around us as the hatch sealed, flooding it up to my neck, then over my head, almost before I had time to hold my breath. Nothing leaked: nothing icy and wet seeped in anyplace … I breathed out and in again, drifting now like I was weightless. The suit’s gills began processing oxygen out of the water; the feel against my skin was cool and soothing. A silver-glinting fish swam past my face.
“Okay?” Mikah gestured.
I nodded. “When you start at the bottom there’s no way to sink any deeper.” I knew that he could hear me, because he grinned.
A small ferry sub was waiting for us at the outer hatch. No one was in it. I had the feeling it only went to one place. As we got in its door sealed—leaving us still underwater as it started away into the darkness.
I latched myself into a seat; Mikah let himself drift, bumping restlessly against the ceiling and the walls. “The Governor—?” I said at last, remembering the name he’d mentioned back on the quay.
“The Governor’s kind of like a pressure valve, you know what I mean? He settles things, when there’s Market troubles. He speaks for everybody, if they need him to.”